Governor Threatened Tribune Over Criticism

A day after the newspaper and television chain filed for bankruptcy protection, federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday that the governor of Illinois, Rod R. Blagojevich, had been illegally threatening to withhold the state’s help in a business deal unless the company’s flagship, The Chicago Tribune, fired editorial writers who had criticized the governor and called for his impeachment.

The writers were not fired, and the editorial page continued to confront the governor. Editors for The Chicago Tribune said Tuesday that they were not aware of any pressure from the governor’s office and the company said it did not do the governor’s bidding.

“I first heard it this morning,” said R. Bruce Dold, the editorial page editor. “I had no inkling at all. We had no idea that he was allegedly bringing this kind of pressure. It was pretty shocking to wake up and hear the governor is gunning for you.”

But conversations recorded by federal investigators, and excerpted in a criminal complaint filed Tuesday by the United States attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois, suggest that for a few weeks Mr. Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, believed that the company would give in.

The accusation stems from the Tribune Company’s efforts to sell the Chicago Cubs baseball team and its stadium, Wrigley Field. That deal, originally expected to be completed early this year, was crucial to giving the company the cash it needed to survive in the short term, but it has been delayed several times.

Company executives had looked into getting a state agency, the Illinois Finance Authority, to help arrange financing for a stadium sale, which would have tax advantages for the company. The complaint states that in one of several secretly recorded conversations, Mr. Harris told Mr. Blagojevich that the savings to the company would be $100 million to $150 million.

The complaint says that Mr. Blagojevich sent Mr. Harris last month to tell the company that the governor could not move the stadium deal forward as long as the editorial writers were in place — ostensibly because the deal would bypass the Illinois Legislature, the very kind of conduct for which those writers had criticized him.

In one conversation, the complaint quotes Mr. Blagojevich as saying, “Someone should say, ‘Get rid of those people.’ ”

In it, the governor advises telling the company of the stadium deal, “Maybe we can’t do this now,” and in language laced with profanity says the newspaper should dismiss the editorial writers who have criticized him if it wants an agreement.

Several days later, the complaint says, Mr. Harris told Mr. Blagojevich that he had spoken with an unnamed adviser to a person identified as “Tribune Owner.” Sam Zell is the chairman and chief executive of the Tribune Company.

In one case, Mr. Harris said, the adviser assured him that Mr. Zell “got the message and is very sensitive to the issue” and that there were “certain corporate reorganizations and budget cuts coming and, reading between the lines, he’s going after that section.”

Later, Mr. Harris tells the governor that the cuts will be made by the end of November.

Since then, there have been staff cuts in several parts of the Tribune Company, but The Chicago Tribune said there had been none from the paper’s editorial page. The one writer the governor complained about by name, John P. McCormick, remains the deputy editorial page editor.

The Tribune Company released a statement on Tuesday afternoon saying, “No one working for the company or on its behalf has ever attempted to influence staffing decisions at The Chicago Tribune or any aspect of the newspaper’s editorial coverage as a result of conversations with officials in the governor’s administration.” Gerould Kern, the editor of the paper, agreed.

In a news conference, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney whose office led the investigation, did not characterize the Tribune Company’s conduct in the scheme, but he praised the newspaper for delaying an article at his request. The article, published last Friday, revealed that investigators had recorded the governor’s conversations and had obtained the cooperation of a former aide to the governor.

Mr. Dold, the editorial page editor, said he found reports of Mr. Blagojevich’s actions oddly reassuring.

“You run an editorial page and you always want to have impact,” he said. “So I guess this suggests that the page has had impact. I’m glad to see the governor’s reading the newspaper.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A33 of the New York edition with the headline: Governor Threatened Tribune Over Criticism, Prosecutors Say. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe